Tips for Eating Ketogenic Diet Foods on the Road

You know how sometimes you have processes in your life that would be so wildly unheard of to most people that you just don't bother trying to explain it? (What, no? You don't have those?)

Well, this is one of those things. But I trust you to have a open mind.

A few weeks ago Mr. Go and I decided it was time to do a little reset. We'd just come back from Gulf Shores after stuffing ourselves with all the seafood and booze we could get our hands on.

So we fasted for roughly 36 hours (Don't tell my dad, he'd be so mad at me) and then for 2 weeks ate as much fat as we could handle. 

(A little aside on fasting: When you fast, your body initiates important cellular repair processes, such as removing waste material from cells (read: cancer), levels of insulin drop significantly, facilitating fat burning, and blood levels of HGH skyrocket. Read the article that I just copied and pasted these facts from HERE.)

Ketogenic Diet

When your body runs out of glucose (sugars from carbs or other sweets) to burn, it creates and uses ketones as fuel, from the breakdown of fat in the liver. Here's a really good explanation on the mechanics of it that I won't bother boring you with.

Fasting is a quick way to get your body into ketosis (the state of burning ketones), but you could also eat Keto style for a while, and eventually you'd fall into it. But you know Mr. Go is all about efficiency. (If you're interested to know if your body is actually in ketosis, get some test strips to pee on.)

Eating Keto style is basically 70% fat, 25% protein and 5% carbs. That 5% translates to about 20g of carbohydrates. Check the labels on all the processed foods in your fridge and you'll find you probably hit that at breakfast. I'm not judging you, things like onions and carrots contain carbohydrates, which are good and necessary for the body, but the excessive consumption of carbohydrates is where you run into problems.

You want to get your net carbs each day from a crap ton of vegetables. Like, as many vegetables as you can physically stuff into your person. The link above and This Site have pretty good tables listing the carb content in veggies and other types of foods. When in doubt, google 'QUESTIONABLE FOOD X' and 'NUTRITION' and Dr. Google will tell you.

So here's what a daily Ketogenic meal plan would look like:

Brunch between 9 and 11 a.m.

• 3 eggs/person, scrambled with a hefty dash of coconut cream, cooked in bacon grease or coconut oil
• A couple slices of bacon, or other leftover meat/fish
• Aforementioned crapton of veggies (brussel sprouts, spinach--raw or sauteed, asparagus, kale, broccoli) cooked in bacon grease, butter or coconut oil or a combination of the three

Dinner between 4 and 6 p.m.

• Fish or fatty grass-fed beef
• Crapton 'o veg (see above)

It's actually super easy to cook. Easier than making myself a plan of all the "recipes" I want to make for a week and going shopping for those ingredients. I just load up my cart with green stuff and fish. Bam. Done.

Health Benefits

Don't let me fool you, this is only the second time we've done this. But already I can tell I have wayyyyy more metabolic flexibility.

The first time we fasted, my body was so dependent on glucose for energy that I felt incredibly weak and tired, and couldn't even continue the fast for a full day. Then the high fat content in the keto diet did a number on my innards. I won't go into detail on that.

This time around, I blasted through like a rock star. I didn't even complain. (Shut up Mr. Go, I can sense you rolling your eyes.) Ok, fine, but I definitely complained less than last time. It's progress.

We drank a lot of water and watched a lot of T.V. Chasing after a toddler requires a lot of energy that was kind of difficult to muster up. But if you can make it to around 5 p.m., you're golden. We went to bed early that night to sleep away the misery and didn't really even feel the need to rush into breakfast the next day.

And this time, my gut isn't so freaked out by high fat/low carb meal compositions! Gold star, gut, you're a champ. And I know that if for some crazy reason I'm not able to get food into my body for a day, I'll be more or less ok. (For reference, in high school if I didn't eat within an hour of waking up, I'd get the dizzy shakes.)

Keto on the Road

So, if you're in a keto cycle and you have to go on a road trip, how do you eat on the road without knocking your body out of ketosis?

1. Pack your own snacks
2. Just...don't stop to eat

We thought we were brilliant. Save money AND avoid roadside fast food? Why did we not do this sooner?

We were packing a cooler for Babs' snacks anyway, so we brainstormed some good fatty, fibrous snacks to eat on the go. They certainly weren't full meals by any means, but we'd just proved to ourselves that we could go over a full day without eating anything, so we were pretty sure we'd be fine. And something magical happens when you load up on fats, protein and fiber...you don't get hungry as often.

Here's what we packed:

1. Just a big ole chunk of ham
Something fatty. Bonus points for eating it like a savage straight out of the package. (See photo 1 above.)

2. Hard boiled eggs
Tiny oval-shaped packages of protein sent from heaven

3. Asparagus
Even tastier raw than cooked, imo

4. Homemade ranch dressing
Here's a recipe. In absence of homemade, get the purest plainest mayo available, and the fat content will be wonderfully through the roof.

Like this one

5. Hard cheese
Not soft, like colby jack or cheddar (which is just mozzarella with food coloring, my friends). Go to the specialty cheese section where all the $45/lb cheeses are and get yourself a tiny slice of hard aged cheddar, and then savor every morsel.

Let me clarify, this is not a thing we do on the reg. But on occasion, after we've let ourselves slide and I find myself snacking on Babs' cereal, we feel the need to break our body's dependency on carbs.

But as far as packing healthy snacks for the road and avoiding the stress (mental and bodily) of finding a good place to stop and eat while trying to make good time and keep Babs happy in the car--that's a no-brainer.

bonus photo of Subey packed to the gills again and Babs with a bucket on her head